Letting students sleep in is a move worth emulating

Earlier this month, online news of Nanyang Girls’ High
School’s successful implementation of starting school 45 minutes
later reached close to half a million page views within a day.

The change, implemented almost a year ago,was mostly
well received but few people realise how remarkable it was to pull
off.

The move to start at 8:15AM came after careful
deliberation. Implementing a later start time in a secondary school
makes sense as these students are the ones affected by a biological
shift in preference for later bedtimes.

Local data shows a 1 to 1.5 hour delay in sleep time
takes place between the ages of 14 and 16 years. So forcing them to
sleep at 10pm is not a fact-based solution.

A 45-minute delay in school start time makes it more
likely that the time will actually be used for sleep (an average of
20 minutes so far in the Nanyang case), thus making the benefits
outweigh the costs.

A similar initiative was carried out in Hong Kong but
the delay in start time was only 15 minutes, and the corresponding
gain in sleep was only three minutes.

Starting later than 8.15 am would be ideal but this
could exacerbate concerns about students using public
transportation at the same time as office workers. The leaders at
Nanyang did not change the school’s start times on a whim. They
reviewed the supporting scientific evidence pointing to the
importance of adequate sleep for memory consolidation, health,
mental wellbeing and accident reduction in students.

The school administraion considered these potential
gains as well as obstacles, including the impact on traffic and
student transport. They engaged students, parents and teachers in
discussions, carefully getting students to internalise the benefits
of sleeping better. To end school at the same time as before, the
curriculum was adjusted after much deliberation.

The process was not plain sailing. Naysayers constantly
reminded us of how impractical and disruptive this would be in
Singapore despite objective information being provided about the
need for change.

Nanyang Girls High School chose to press on. Data
gathered from two teams in Duke-NUS Medical School shows that our
secondary school students and undergraduates sleep one to two hours
less than their Australian and United Kingdom counterparts. It was
high time that someone went beyond commenting and acted on the
science to help students flourish.

SLEEP QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE

As far as we can tell, most parents are supportive of
their children starting school later. Yet there is a need to
address the concerns of those who are against the idea by spelling
out the facts.

First, some people just need less sleep than
recommended and can flourish without adverse consequences. Some are
larks, whose natural preference is to sleep early and rise
early.

But clearly, not everyone else should be held to these
standards.

To those who say ‘we toughed it out, why can’t the
present generation’ I would say we need to adapt to a changing
world and that optimising sleep seeks to give Singaporeans a
competitive edge in Asia.

Adequate sleep has benefits. Advocating sleep should be
an offensive, not a defensive move. For example, at least one
European soccer team is providing comfortable rooms for their
players to sleep in the afternoon before playing to enhance
night-time game performance. If parents are willing to invest
heavily on private tuition, doesn’t improving sleep make sense?

It is not enough to work hard. Working smarter is what
we need to get better at. Surviving isn’t good enough, flourishing
is what the next generation must aspire to. Allocating downtime to
rest, reflect and sleep will not create lazy people. Instead, it is
intended to increase productivity and work intensity during
worktime.

Despite numerous medical studies supporting links
between short sleep duration and diabetes, obesity, and the
metabolic syndrome, many doctors are largely unaware or indifferent
to these findings.

The focus of medicine in Singapore is on screening,
early diagnosis, early and cost-effective treatment, not
prevention. As such, there is widespread ignorance of
well-established facts like the mid-adolescent shift in preference
for later sleep times and its subsequent reversal in early
adulthood. One doctor has even gone on record to say that sleeping
less on weekdays and catching up on weekends is fine, it is not.
This sleeping pattern is associated with increased risk of obesity
and diabetes mellitus.

To argue that adjustments in transportation to
accommodate a later school start time are too difficult is
tantamount to devaluing the health and wellbeing of the next
generation.

Even the IT and finance industries, two strong
supporters of the notion that one can always work harder for
profit, are realising that karōshi, the Japanese word for death
from overwork, is real.

Mr Ranjan Das, one of India’s youngest CEOs died at age
42 from a cardiac arrest; many attribute short sleep as a
contributory factor. Mr Zhang Rui, founder of Chunyu Doctor,
suffered a similar fate, possibly a consequence of a ‘996 schedule’
– 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week + loads of stress.

Mr Sarvshreshth Gupta, a trader in Goldman Sachs was
only 22 when he took his own life, unable to cope with stress at
work and lack of sleep.

Lack of sleep is not a badge of honour.

Having adequate sleep is a public health issue and no
less important than eating right and exercising sufficiently.

Starting school later may not be for every school at
the present time. However, it is critical to start the conversation
within families, office tea rooms and board rooms about optimising
sleep and time-use, followed by personal commitment to action.

The success of Nanyang against conventional wisdom
should prove infectious. One school defied the odds and changed for
the better. Others can learn and transform lives in a way best
suited to their students’ needs.

For the sake for our young and vulnerable citizens, I
hope this thought will be consolidated the next time Singapore goes
to bed.